World's largest botanical record

The world's largest botanical record, Flora of China, has been published after 45 years of painstaking work.

The world's largest botanical record, Flora of China, has been published after 45 years of painstaking work, state media reported on Thursday.

The 126-volume tome describes 31,142 plants that have been found in China, with more than 9,000 pictures. China has the world's third largest reserve of flora, next to only Brazil and Indonesia.

It contains historical records, modal characteristics, geographical distribution, ecological environments and other detailed information.

Chen Yiyu, director of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, said that compiling the book had involved generations of botanists.

Since the 1920s, Chinese botanists have been collecting floral specimens and in 1959 the Chinese Academy of Sciences decided to record what was being found, Xinhua news agency said.

Since then, 312 botanists from 34 research institutes or universities have participated in the project.

Before Flora of China was completed, the 25-volume Flora of the Soviet Union, which was compiled from 1934 to 1959, was the world's largest, containing more than 10,000 plants, Xinhua said.